In Psychiatry, there is a concept called ‘Rationalization’. Rationalization is an attempt to logically justify immoral, deviant, or generally unacceptable behaviour. In Freud’s classic psychoanalytic theory, rationalization is a defence mechanism, an unconscious attempt to avoid addressing the underlying reasons for a behaviour. For example, when an employee is found guilty of killing his boss and he attempts to explain it by saying his boss deserved to die because he was greedy and mean to him. Or when a woman poisons her husband and says he was physically abusing her, hence her motive for murder.
Sigmund Freud described rationalization as a defence mechanism and the ego’s attempt to make a particular action acceptable to the superego—the part of a person demanding moral behaviour. He also explained some motives for behaviour are too uncomfortable or painful for people to face. For example: An adult might be afraid of the dark as a result of being molested at night during childhood. That person might rationalize the fear by emphasizing that being unable to see one’s surroundings is dangerous or by pointing out most burglaries occur at night.
It is a popular concept and one that almost all humans are guilty of. ‘Why shouldn’t I jump the line? After all, everyone else is doing it and I have a lot of things to do too.’ Most of us engage in rationalization on a semi-regular basis. A person might account for a bad mood or general rude behaviour by explaining that bad traffic affected the morning commute. Someone who is passed over for a promotion might rationalize the disappointment by claiming to not have wanted so much responsibility after all. You don’t get a particular job; you say you never wanted it in the first place. You get turned down for a date; you say you are not attracted to the person anyway. You don’t perform well in the class test; you try to reason that you didn’t get enough time to study. And so on and so on.
However, the most common rationalization Nigerians engage in is when we use poverty as an excuse to steal. When caught stealing, a staff of an organisation said his salary of N25,000 a month was not enough to sustain his family, hence the need for him to divert company funds into his personal account. Another employee, a banker reasoned that his bosses got juicy yearly bonuses while he got a mere pittance. Therefore, he augmented his salary by stealing from the bank.
People resort to rationalization either when they know that they have done something that they shouldn’t have done, when they can’t do something that they want to do, or when they want to convince themselves that things are not so bad after all. So, they try to come up with lame reasons or excuses to justify themselves. It’s precisely for this reason that rationalization is also known as ‘making excuses.’
A majority of Nigerians, when asked the reason why they steal when they get into public administration will tell you (privately, of course) that, it is simply their turn to eat a share of the ‘National Cake’. This hypothetical cake eating is what has consumed us all and continues to push us into making very poor decisions in government. The rationalization that many others have stolen and gotten away with it and so why should you do any different? Isn’t everyone stealing? Is it not ‘turn by turn’? God has blessed you with this position and so it is your turn to cut a hefty portion out of the national cake that other people from different tribes and religions have been devouring for so long.
The news of the sentence and conviction of former Chairman of the now defunct Pension Reform Task Team, Alhaji Abdurasheed Maina did not come as a surprise. Nor did the billions of Naira and Dollars he was said to have diverted. I am sure, somewhere in his mind, he rationalised that he needed to ‘gather’ enough money so that he could retire as a rich man and leave enough for his children. His news came weeks after Diezani’s wonderful diamond bra came up for auction. That is the one that irks me. I can fathom people rationalising stealing money for school fees, health care and general social welfare but to use that money to buy a 12.5-billion-dollar bra? As what? To pass as a family heirloom? How the hell does someone rationalise that? I need to steal this Victoria Secret bra because this is my portion of the national cake?
Instead of sharing this so-called national cake, why don’t we bake one together? Why can’t we change our perception so that we think about what ingredients to add so as to make the ‘cake’ tastier? Why don’t we aim to bake rather than sharing all the time? If we continue sharing, what else will we leave for our kids? Crumbs? As it is now, the crumbs trickling down are barely enough for millions of Nigeria.
In reality, rationalizing an event may help individuals maintain self-respect or avoid guilt over something they have done wrong. In many cases, rationalization is not harmful, but continuous self-deception, when a person consistently makes excuses for destructive behaviour, can become dangerous. For example, in medicine, despite knowing that smoking can lead to lung cancer, which is a life-threatening condition, smokers try to rationalize their ‘act’ by coming up with excuses like, only heavy smokers are at the risk of lung cancer, or that everyone must die someday, so why not enjoy life when you can. I do not need to tell you how incredibly dangerous this line of thinking is.
But what about the consequences of rationalising stealing? How does this affect us as a nation? The human mind is created with a conscience, which is essentially what guides us to what is wrong and what is right. Everybody knows stealing is wrong and the first time one does it, I imagine they feel a sense of guilt and foreboding. Yet, the person repeats the act, again and again until that voice telling him it is wrong is silenced and he believes he is entitled to that money. Again, I will refer to Maina’s case; when humans justify that kind of theft in their minds and show no remorse, make no mistake about it, that person has metamorphosized into a sociopath.
No matter the way we sugar coat it—wrong is wrong and right is right. And no amount of rationalisation can ever change that.
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